Study: Males vs. females in social networks

Have you ever wondered how many of Twitter’s users are women? Or men? What about Facebook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, and other sites in the social media sphere?

We have tracked down this information for a number of social network sites (19 of them). All the major ones have been included, like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and also some of the most popular social news sites; Digg, Reddit and Slashdot.

Have you accounted for the fake female profiles that belong to scammers and spammers? What is the source of your data?

I used to work at MySpace/FIM heading up an R&D group, I did a lot of research on just about every social network site I could find, and I would say that possibly 25% of every “female” profile that I viewed was a spam page.

I’m no longer with FIM, but I’m still signed up with those networks and I get “invites” all the time from spam pages. Coincidentally, the two networks that I get the most spam invites from are Bebo and MySpace. Which are at the top of your list for female users.

I have to agree with Don that some of the difference having to do with the “oh so friendly and attractive” young spambots following me on Twitter. I haven’t actually seen this so much on Facebook however.

However I think it’s more psychological than that. Many of these sites force you to embrace your inner being, and be authentic when expressing yourself. Reddit and the like are kind of like the obnoxious guy who just forwards links all of the time on Twitter. Not too much substance, but boy does it make him look like he’s a big reader.

My immediate thought is that there are lots of fake female profiles on social networking sites. Whether it’s spammers, scammers, or men pretending to be women, I’m willing to bet that there are a lot more fake women than fake men about.

Which is odd, really – if it’s really true that these sites have more women using them than men, then there should be an incentive to create fake male profiles

I would say Reddit and so on are about competition such as in “Who is larger, better, more attractive to the audience.” Whereas the others are more about connecting with each other and staying in touch.

This tells me that females like to connect and communicate more with each other than males do.

Whenever I get a request to join a new social network that I don’t feel I would be very active in I decline the invitation. But I think many females think “oh cool Jenny in London wants me to be her friend on BeBo, maybe I should join” and then the female user joins but is never really active beyond that initial contact like on her primary social networks.

I guess the next stat would be how active males and females are on the social networking sites, that would tell us a much different story I’m sure.

Very sarcastic and hyper-critical site (e.g., getting “slashdotted”) is not going to appeal to women.

Regarding ‘activity’, interesting Harvard Study: http://ow.ly/E8Xt
SAYS
1. About 10% of users generate over 90% of the content/messages
2. The average Twitter account sends one message during its entire account life
3. 25% of users NEVER tweet
4. The average man is almost twice more likely to follow another man than a woman

I guess women have more “sharing needs” than men. Most women like to tell how the day was, and to say what they want, like, talk about their feelings, etc. Why?

Well, I really don’t know. But I´m almost sure it´s a question of XX (not only a Social Behavior). Maybe because sharing it´s something even physical for a woman, since we share our own bodies with babys.

I also have to be skeptical about some of these results and agree with those before me about the fake profiles.
I had to quit Bebo for example because I was getting spammed by too many friend requests from “girls” with revealing pics. Some of these sites may actually be mostly male dominated but have a majority of female spam profiles simply since they will be more likely to get clicks to lead to some third party site for making money.
The “females communicate more than males” suggestion is interesting, but would only be useful to speculate if it could be guaranteed that these were from active and non-spamming profiles. Facebook seems to do a good job keeping out fake profiles – it would be a better one to analyse.
I’m surprised Orkut wasn’t included in the chart – although that’s definitely got plenty of fake profiles.

Hi,
I agree with Ana. I see this on our site, women join and have the need to connect and share with other women. I think they also value and place high importance on building strong relationships in a different way then men do. So whether they are online or offline, women are reaching out and connecting.

You close saying that “the big question” is what’s attractive to males vs. females. I don’t think that’s the big question. I think the big question is why do you still think males and females are the only two genders to measure? NOT being snarky. For over 20 years, postmodern gender theory has been taught at all sorts of high school thru doctorate levels. Postmodern gender theory says there are more than two genders. Last year, the Pope proclaimed postmodern gender theory evil. Doesn’t that give you a clue? Really, not being snarky here. Your survey is skewed by an ethnomethodological assumption. Heh.

That SlashDot.org has a mostly male user-base kind of goes without saying. How many women do you know outside of the major tech schools/professions who would pride themselves on reading a publication with the tagline, “News for nerds, stuff that matters?”

Well, it seems like Women don’t like geek stuff like slashdot. Once the things get complex like social news sites, women tend to behave negatively towards them. Women like easy stuff. Just write, Kiss, kiss and bang!!!

I think the internet has more female users than males in general, Most of my male friends dont even use the internet. But those are some good numbers to see as a guy. In terms of twitter i still feel a bit uncomfortable saying send me a “tweet” or you can find me i’m on twitter. Every female friend i know has a facebook account

These statistics are interesting. I was surprised to see that females actually dominate facebook, myspace and twitter, but like one of the comments stated: women do converse more. This does help for people trying to target in on their markets. Thanks for the information.

Not saying you’re being intentionally difficult, but this study was obviously aimed at sexes, not genders. I am unsure why you chose to bring up transgendered issues when the stats have nothing to do with that. You can choose to identify with whatever gender you want and it won’t alter these statistics in the slightest.

I think only now women becoming more tech savvy. Because guys have always been very interested in technology and most of these sites might focus on technology based information which attracts more male users. Its just a opinion but i am not meaning to say that woman are not tech savvy but they are becoming one.

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